Mum calls for Bucks County Show to ban hunts and hounds

Hayley O’Keeffe

An anti-fox hunting campaigner has launched a petition calling for hunts and their hounds to be barred from Bucks County Show.

The much-loved event, which brings people from all walks of life together to celebrate rural life, features local hunts people with their horses and hounds.

Bucks County Show 2013 - Pictured is The Farmers Bloodhounds in the main arena

A popular part of the show is the parading of the hounds, while hundreds of children enjoy meeting the dogs in their pen.

However, mum-of-one Katie Angus, who lives in the Vale, wants them out, claiming that hunting is a ‘political issue’ which the show should not ‘force down people’s throats’, or suggest is ‘the epicentre of Bucks life’.

She wants anti-fox hunting campaigners to be invited to the show so that their arguments can be put forward.

A spokesman for Bucks County Show said the event supports legal country pursuits (hunts using scented lures for hounds to chase are perfectly legal following the ban on chasing foxes in 2004) but added that the show did not want to be drawn further into the debate.

Mrs Angus, 31, a marketing manager who lives with her three-year-old son Rhys and husband Philip, 28, said: “I won’t take my family to the County Show because I am not going to endorse fox hunting.

“I think when the issue is so big on the political agenda it is not right for them to be parading and spouting what is essentially a political agenda.”

Her petition has so far gained 1,700 signatures from around the country and abroad.

She added: “I and several others have approached the organisers of Bucks County Show and asked them to explain why they feel it’s justified to have the local hunt present, thus deterring the majority of the public that are against hunting with dogs, to which we all received a generic response that the committee would consider our comments after the show.”